NEW HAVEN — One after another, the pride of Yale football entered the big tent outside Portal 20 of the Yale Bowl.

There was Rich Diana, Class of 1982, who played for Don Shula in the Super Bowl and became an orthopedic surgeon. There was John Spagnola, Class of '79, an Eagle Scout who played in the Super Bowl for the Philadelphia Eagles.

There was John Pagliaro, Class of '78, and Dick Jauron, Class of '73, who played safety in the NFL and became head coach of the Bears and Bills. The biggest gathering of former athletes in school history — more than 40 in all — arrived in New Haven to be honored at halftime of the 44-30 victory against Princeton as members of the all-time Yale Bowl team.

Jessica Simpson wasn't there, but her husband, Eric Johnson, was. And there was Calvin Hill, a guy who Carm Cozza once said was so versatile, so talented, he could have played all 22 positions. "Legends of the Bowl," that's what they called the 67, including 47 All-Americans and 18 NFL players, on this 100th anniversary of the Yale Bowl.

"You can feel the tradition," Jauron said.

"You can feel the lore," Johnson said. "You can feel the spirit."

If you didn't know better, you would have sworn that Albie Booth was going to come walking through the door. If you didn't know better, you would have sworn that Larry Kelley and Clint Frank, the twin Heisman winners of the 1930s, would, too.

The score doesn't indicate it, but the Bulldogs defense ran roughshod against the Princeton Tigers Saturday and the special teams unit wasn't too bad, either, in a 44-30 win before...

(DESMOND CONNER)

"When you play at Yale you feel part of a great continuum," said Hill, who went on to star with the Cowboys and whose son, Grant, became a star at Duke and in the NBA. "When you play at Yale, study at Yale, you are part of something that is much bigger than you."

My question for all of them was as simple as it was sweeping: How would you describe how Yale football, in its 143rd season, fits into the pantheon of American sport?

"We all know it's the birthplace of American football," Jauron said. "It contributed a great deal to it in terms of names, numbers, regulations and everything else. The best thing Yale, the Ivy League contributes to American football today is the way it goes about it. The place it serves in the greater university, which probably is where it should be, not overly inflated and not undervalued. Great qualities of a great university and a great game."

Pagliaro, a star at Derby, said it was his dream to play for the Bulldogs and in the Yale Bowl. He talked about how, as a kid, he'd sit in the end zone with his dad, watching Hill and Brian Dowling.

"Not many dreams come true, but mine did," Pagliaro said. "Yale football means doing football the right way. Not over-emphasizing it, attracting the best scholar-athletes in the country, keeping the game in perspective, while showcasing them. That's the way football should be today. Some schools disagree, but the Ivy League does it the right way and Yale is a perfect example of it."

Yale isn't perfect. The Ivy League isn't perfect. Still, so, so many major college football programs stand as hypocritical fools when they refer to their student-athletes. It is not a myth at Yale.

"My goal was not to play in the NFL, my goal was to be a Yale man," Hill said. "You get a sensational education with some of the top scholars in their fields. You connect with wonderful athletes. I met Levi Jackson. I met Clint Frank. I knew Larry Kelley. I knew Ducky Pond. I read about Albie Booth and the legends. To get a chance to be part of, it doesn't get any better.

"It's like Knute Rockne said when somebody asked him about a new formation, he said, 'I got it from Yale where everything else in football comes from.' Obviously, Yale at this juncture is not Alabama. It's not the Southeast Conference. But I remind guys from Georgia that they're named the Bulldogs because their president when they started football wanted to have a program like Yale. I remind people I know from Oklahoma that Boomer Sooner was modeled after Boola Boola."

And then Calvin Hill said something especially powerful.

"The one thing that is sensational about Yale and the Ivy League and even more so now is we never the prostituted the academic mission. It's still about values. Those players today work as hard as anybody in the classroom as on the field. I'm proud of that. I'm really proud of that."

Yet Diana also insisted that Yale football cannot become a dusty past. That's why he and so many of the guys under the big tent were thrilled with the team that Tony Reno has built.

"Without a good football team, this stuff doesn't mean as much," Diana said. "We don't want to become a memory. We don't want to just be a place in history. We want to be current as well. You cannot deny what Walter Camp did to establish American football. To see Notre Dame writing a letter to him asking how to start a program, you know our position in history is entrenched.

"But the important thing is to build on it for the future. That's what coach [Tony] Reno is doing. The bottom line is we want to have a lot of great athletes and educate great kids."

Diana, from Hamden, is one of six Bowl legends from Connecticut. He likes to point out that his high school coach, Rob Carbone, is in the Connecticut High School Coaches Hall of Fame, his college coach Cozza is in the College Football Hall of Fame and Shula is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Cozza, 84, has had health problems recently and was unable to make the game Saturday. To say he was missed by his boys is a massive understatement.

"To play for Carm and his staff was like playing for family," Pagliaro said. "He knew how to delegate and he knew how to be a leader. He know how to be father, brother and coach all at the same time and still be effective. Not many coaches know how to do that. I'm still very close to all the coaches. We talk. We visit. We cry when people die. We never forget."

"Carm's a terrific man, he cared about every player," Jauron said. "Almost impossibly, he seems to remember every player he ever had. He's a remarkable man. He loved the game of football for the right reasons, the team part of it, the human part of it, the relationship part of it. He wasn't an abusive man, but he was a stern man."

Spagnola said he never would have been a Yale man without football, and he probably never would have lasted without Cozza.

"Carm was the perfect coach for that time in my life," Spagnola said. "I wouldn't have won any maturity awards at that age. He was patient, and for that reason I sort of blossomed. With the structure of today's game, I probably would have been out of football by my sophomore year. He's a great molder of young men."

In the 1978 game against Harvard, quarterback Pat O'Brien lateraled the ball to Spagnola and he found Bob Krystyniak for a 77-yard touchdown.

"It's still the longest scoring play against Harvard," Spagnola said. "Bob and I sit together and when Yale gets to the 24 we have a little drink because we know they can't break the record on that series. By the end of the game we're usually feeling pretty good."

Johnson had an incredible 21 catches for 244 yards in the 1999 Harvard game, but it is the diving touchdown catch off a deflected pass with 29 seconds left that allowed the Bulldogs to win a share of the Ivy League title for the first time in 10 years.

"I was tired," Johnson said. "Joe Walland had thrown me a lot of balls. That catch, it's funny, I was running a slant and I beat my man. I saw it tip fingers and knew I had to sprawl out and catch it. There was a lot of controversy [that the ball hit the ground]. It was so much fun. It's a cool day in Yale history."

And so was this one.

"It's the original, the OG," or original gangster, said Johnson, when asked what Yale football meant. "Football was invented here. It is sacred ground."

"You put that Y on your helmet," Spagnola said, "and you represent something much bigger than yourself. You come back and visit, you feel like you're part of something really important."